Jeff Bell, President of Mindscape, joins the pod to talk about Service Hub—and how they built in a client portal through Knowledge Base and Help Desk where clients can access embedded reports unique to their business, viewing recordings of trainings and videos custom built for them, submitting tickets to their points of contact at Mindscape, and more. Jeff shares structurally how it was built, how his developers unified the UX and menu with the Mindscape website, how private content is hosted and made viewable, and how client access is provisioned through automation. After we discuss what it looks like, Jeff shares the value his team now sees by transforming the way clients engage with the team—including time savings and efficiency gains, streamlined communications with clients and between departments, and improved visibility of work in production. We wrap with how Mindscape rolled this out, how they onboarded both their teams to the new processes and how they incentivized adoption from their clients.

Christopher Barnett, Founder of WORQFLOW, joins the podcast to explore solutions-based selling as a catalyst for scaling small sales teams. He explains its intersection with RevOps and how it can give partners an edge in competitive scenarios with other CRMs. Christopher also delves into multi-Hub selling, shares how it enhances the value of HubSpot, spotlights his favorite Hub "pairings", and compares it with the common "land and expand" strategy. The episode rounds off with his approach to software demos, where they live in the selling process, how they're structured, and how he provisions hands-on access to prospects.

Bryan Byler, Director of Solutions Architecture at Mole Street, is here to talk about artificial intelligence—specifically, how partners can navigate the growing proliferation of AI-powered solutions and technologies. He outlines a number of use-cases that partners should consider incorporating into their work streams, tools that enable those use-cases, and how he keeps pace with the rapidly evolving AI landscape. We then move over to Mole Street’s performance within the HubSpot ecosystem, and after coming in 2nd for North American Partner of the Year, Bryan shares his insights on the team’s sales engine—including their digital transformation initiatives and emphasis on expanding existing client relationships. We wrap with his recommendations for how small teams can find success in HubSpot’s partner program—including the resources, approaches, and GTM strategies that can yield great results.

Rich Wood, CEO of Six and Flow, joins the podcast to share his team’s experimentation with generative AI. He discusses what drove the initial interest, the guardrails he’s set for his team, and how he’s begun integrating it into his workstreams, processes, and more. Rich also shares some thoughts on how to onboard a larger team to generative AI use and upskill a team’s “AI-savvy-ness”—including prompt creation, templatization, and the human “sense check” reviewal of outputs. We then discuss how generative AI has helped the team—including the efficiency gains uncovered and the pull-through impact onto the client experience.

Samuel Banks, Head of Implementation at Fuelius—a solutions partner who has been awarded three accreditations, joins the podcast to share how he identifies the work his team does as being well aligned with a specific accreditation, and how others can determine their readiness and eligibility. He shares the actual application preparation process, including who was involved across the team, the project management approach applied, the time and bandwidth required, and how to leverage the preparation resources made available. He also goes into application design, with his tips and strategies for building applications with a greater likelihood of success. And we wrap with a discussion on prerequisite certifications, and how Fuelius assigns, tracks, and manages that process.

We’re less than ONE WEEK away from World Certification Week 2023—so George B Thomas, owner of George B Thomas, LLC and longtime HubSpot Academy advocate, joins the show to walk us through the role HubSpot Academy has played throughout his career and life journey, and the impact he’s seen from achieving certifications by the dozens. We get into this year’s World Cert Week event, what his plan is, and his recommendations for others to approach it with intention. And knowing George has navigated nearly all of the HubSpot Academy catalog, he offers up his tips for operationalizing the pursuit of certifications—including how he keeps up with new additions and updates, how he determines what to take and in what order, how to keep recertifications manageable to maintain certification status, and how to improve exam pass rates overall.

The countdown to World Certification Week 2023 has begun! From May 15th through the 19th, HubSpot will donate five dollars for every certification awarded during that week to nonprofits dedicated to expanding access and opportunities for education around the world. So it makes sense that for this week’s episode, Penina Shtauber, a Director of Digital Marketing at ScaleOps, comes on the show to talk about her team leverages HubSpot Academy certifications to scale new hire onboarding efforts and reduce the ramp up time for the team. She shares the benefits behind certification assignments, both for the team and as a pull-through to their clients, how assignments are handled between company directives and self-selection, and how they continue to layer in for continued employee development.

Rod Moynihan, CEO of B.A.C., joins the show to share insights from his years of experience sitting on both sides of the SaaS partnership table. He offers his perspective on what solutions partners need to operationalize to be ready to engage with corporate, enterprise, and upmarket buyers—and how they can “earn the right” to have a seat in those discussions. We discuss the importance of deeply understanding your customers, domain, and industry—and how those evolve from serving SMBs and midmarket organizations. Rod also shares what partners looking to move upmarket should anticipate on changing—from their service offerings, sales process, and overall go-to-market strategy. We wrap with performance management and how success tends to be defined in upmarket engagements—and how citable % shifts in efficiency gains can go a long way.

Sam Anderson, CEO and cofounder of Origin63, joins the podcast to discuss her journey in becoming a technical consultant for upmarket HubSpot customers. Sam walks us through the team's original pivot to technical consulting services and how the needs of upmarket business change, become more specialized, and require thorough, post-implementation support. As Sam mentions, the actual implementation of technology is only 50% of the actual rollout—and successful change management is what truly ensures long-term success for businesses—so she explains her team’s approach to change management and post-implementation support, and how it positively impacts Origin63’s bottom line.

Yamini Rangan, HubSpot’s Chief Executive Officer, joins the show to share her vision for the HubSpot solutions partner program, HubSpot’s own strategic objectives for 2023+, the opportunities ahead for solutions partners, and her recommendations for how partners can thrive in the ecosystem. We start by checking in with her original vision statement for the partner program from a few years ago—and get her take on how HubSpot and partners are doing in realizing that vision together. We then dive into the big bets HubSpot is making in its long-term strategy development—from product development (including generative AI), to its upmarket strategy, to its own flywheel strategy across marketing, sales, and services teams. We wrap with her recommendations for solutions partners, including recommendations around depth of knowledge on things like CRM customization and extensibility, collaborative selling and servicing of customers with HubSpot, driving customer value with deep connection and engagement, and a ton more.